


Like A Lit Fireplace On A Wintry Day

by unintelligiblescreaming



Series: the extremely self-indulgent harry potter au [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Crossover, Dave Thinks The Muggle Internet Is Fake, Gen, Hogwarts Express, Potterstuck, Pureblood Politics, Sorting Ceremony, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 12:43:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7892728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unintelligiblescreaming/pseuds/unintelligiblescreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dude, are you seriously reading a book with the words ‘fiery passion’ in the tagline?” you snicker. Then you frown. “Hey, the pictures aren’t even moving.”</p>
<p>Karkat glowers at his book suspiciously. “Are they supposed to?”</p>
<p>“…Yeah?”</p>
<p>“Is that a wizarding thing?”</p>
<p>You’re still looking at him in confusion when Rose coughs delicately. “Dave, is it possible that our new acquaintance is… Muggleborn?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Lit Fireplace On A Wintry Day

**Author's Note:**

> this is what i wrote instead of working on fics that actually need my attention

Your name is Dave Strider, and you and your cousin Rose are still trying to find a compartment even though the train has already begun trundling slowly out of the station.  
  
This is your brother’s fault, since he found his friends already in a compartment closer to the front, and you refuse to do something as uncool as hang out with your older brother on the Hogwarts train. It’s, like, supposed to be the hours where you find your first friends or rivals or whatever, and you have no intention of spending it sitting awkwardly next to Dirk while he ignores you to chat with his friends who are all three years older than you. Instead you’re going as far away from that compartment as possible and you’re dragging Rose with you.  
  
“I think at this point we should relinquish the idea of an empty compartment at all,” Rose comments. “We’re almost at the caboose.”  
  
“You know what? Fine.”  
  
The one nearest to you has only a single occupant, a first-year that you assume is your own age despite being the scrawniest scrap of meat you’ve ever seen. You slam open the sliding doors—the occupant jerks up in surprise—and take your seat. Rose deigns to sit beside you.  
  
The kid across from you has dark circles under his eyes, messy brown hair, and a cute little nose. He’s reading a paperback novel. You put your feet up on the seat next to him.  He stares at your feet, and then up at you, and back at your feet again, and back at you, with the most hilarious look of outrage on his face.  
  
You push your sunglasses higher up on your face. “Sup.”  
  
“Get your filthy soles out of my personal space bubble,” he says, affronted.  
  
“These soles are tired, baby, they’ve been working their little bunions off for hours now,” you say. “So mean, trying to deny them their hard-earned rest.”  
  
He narrows his eyes. “I’m having difficulty finding words to explain just how few fucks I give about your bunions.”  
  
Rose sighs. “Forgive my genetic relation’s awful manners. I am Rose Lalonde, this is Dave Strider, and you are?”  
  
“None of your fucking business.” He scoots away from your feet and returns angrily to his book, propping it up in front of his face in a clear “fuck off” gesture. You peer at the cover—oh God, it’s one of those pulpy romance novels that Rose secretly likes, with the scantily clad main characters standing dramatically close to each other underneath the curly lettering of the title.  
  
“Dude, are you seriously reading a book with the words ‘fiery passion’ in the tagline?” you say, snickering. Then you frown. “Hey, the pictures aren’t even moving.”  
  
The guy lowers the paperback so you can see the upper part of his face. He glowers down at his book suspiciously. “Are they supposed to?”  
  
“…Yeah?”  
  
“Is that a wizarding thing?”  
  
You’re still looking at him in confusion when Rose coughs delicately. “Dave, is it possible that our new acquaintance is… Muggleborn?”  
  
You blink. In that case, he shouldn’t be here, should he? There’s a separate section of the train for Muggleborns. That’s how it’s set up this year, since Minister English is now in office and has been making as many changes as he can pass through the Wizengamot. When you actually get to Hogwarts there isn’t any separation like that (other than Muggleborns not being allowed on the Quidditch teams) because Headmistress Maryam is really obstinate when it comes to Ministry interference, even when it’s something perfectly sensible like this.  
  
Rose raises a single eyebrow, which is a gesture that would be ridiculous as fuck on anyone else. “Were you not notified of the, ah, seating arrangements?”  
  
“What ‘seating arrangements’? Everyone I passed is moving in and out of compartments like it’s a goddamn race.”  
  
You elbow Rose to get her to shut up. “Never mind that,” you say. “So you’re Muggleborn. Do you know what House you’ll be sorted into?”  
  
Rose is giving you an incredulous look. You ignore her. Maybe it’s a strange thing to be interested in, but you’ve never even met someone your age who wasn’t pureblood, and you’re kind of curious to see what he’s like.  
  
The kid lowers his book even further. “The professor who came to my house told me about that,” he says hesitantly, like he’s unwilling to concede that you’ve captured his attention successfully enough to engage in conversation. “Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, Slytherin, right? I thought you didn’t know which House you’ll be into until the Sorting.”  
  
You scoff. “Nah, that’s bullshit. Me ’n Rose are going to Slytherin, like the rest of our family. It’s how it works.”  
  
“Not always,” Rose counters. “The younger Peixes girl went to Hufflepuff even though the Peixes family is traditionally Slytherin.”  
  
“Yeah, but that was a special case. I mean, we had that awful tea party thing at her mother’s estate a couple years back, and she was as un-Slytherin as it gets. We saw it coming.” You uncross your legs and purposefully shift them closer to the kid across from you, who leans away in distaste.  
  
Once he’s done adjusting himself so that no part of his body is in danger of contact with your shoes, he closes his book and says, “Hufflepuff, probably. I’m hoping for Gryffindor, though.”  
  
That pretty much fits in with what you’ve been told about Muggleborns. Your parents had assured you that you wouldn’t find any of them in Slytherin and only a rare few in Ravenclaw, and that was all you had to worry about because those were the only acceptable Houses for someone from a family like yours. You’d probably have a few shared classes, but other than that you wouldn’t have to associate much with them. “So what do you think of the wizarding world?” you press.  
  
He frowns. “It’s exciting.”  
  
“You don’t sound very excited.”  
  
“A side effect of your ugly visage and its presence in my immediate vicinity.”  
  
You laugh. “Are you like this all the time, or am I just special?”  
  
He graces this with an exhaustive eye-roll and an extended groan.    
  
Rose seems to have been struck by the same curiosity as you, because she’s begun staring at the guy as if he’s a particularly fascinating beetle. “Do you have any siblings?”  
  
“No. Why?”  
  
“I was merely curious as to whether or not any of them displayed any magical ability.”  
  
“Is that common for kids that come from nonmagical families?”  
  
“I wouldn’t know.”  
  
He turns his glare on her. “Okay, seriously, stop with the staring. It’s creepy.”  
  
Just then, there’s a sharp rapping at your door. The guy whose name you still don’t know reaches up and slides it open. It’s the trolley.  
  
“Food, candy, drinks?” asks the lady, and you _just barely_ stop yourself from flinching, because it turns out she’s a ghost.  
  
You hear a sharp intake of breath from Rose, but that’s it. The other person in the compartment has no such self-control—there’s a choked-up spluttering sound like a backed-up sink, and then he squeaks out, “You’re see-through!”  
  
“How rude,” mutters Rose disapprovingly.  
  
“Now, now, dear, it’s natural to be shocked the first time you meet the not-so-recently deceased,” the trolley lady admonishes her, then gives the Muggleborn a smile. “They call me the Peregrine Mendicant. What about you?”  
  
He’s still staring at her with impossibly wide eyes, but eventually the question seems to register. “Um, K-karkat,” he stutters.  
  
“That’s a nice name,” she says. “Would you like to buy some sweets?”  
  
He flushes. “Uh, no thanks. I’m fine.”  
  
You and your cousin, on the other hand, talk over each other in your sudden craze to buy as much sickeningly sweet candy as possible. She orders four packets of Every Flavour Beans, which results in a struggle over who gets first pick (you always go for the apple-flavored ones and she eats all the purple ones first), and you’ve already devoured four Chocolate Frogs before you realize that Karkat is looking uncomfortable and avoiding eye contact.  
  
“Did you bring a lunch?” you ask finally.  
  
His eyes scrunch up in annoyance. “No.”  
  
You consider the fifth Chocolate Frog you were about to open up. You look at Karkat. Finally you sigh and do the most magnanimous thing you’ve done all month: you hand him the chocolate.

“Are… you giving that to me?” He examines your offering suspiciously.  
  
“Dude, just take it.”  
  
He does, frowning. “This container is rattling.”  
  
“Well, duh. There wouldn’t be any point if it didn’t move around a bit.” And then, because you’re a gigantic fucking pushover, you gather up the rest of the sweets you were about to guzzle down and dump them in his lap. “Here.”  
  
By the time Rose reminds you that it’s time to get dressed in your school robes, you’ve successfully waded through a whole conversation with a Muggleborn, albeit with a liberal dousing of the word “fuck” and a number of intrusive queries from your darling cousin. You learn that he has a pet hermit crab, his father is a professor at a Muggle university who studies something called “sociology” and that Muggles talk to each other and share information over something called the internet, which sounds totally fake, and you tell him so.  
  
You’re embroiled in a heavily metaphor-laden argument over the possible fakeness of “gmail” and “tumblr” when Rose interrupts to point out that Hogwarts is visible in the distance, at which time you all drop everything to press your noses against the window and generally act uncool about the whole thing. The next thing you know, the train is jolting to a stop and you lose track of Karkat in the rush to get off.  
  
The castle is a dark, towering mass across the lake and the water is black and glittering with reflected starshine. Rose wonders aloud whether the students will be allowed to meet the giant octopus, which changes your mood from “ooh pretty” to “fuck there’s a giant horrorterror somewhere beneath this flimsy boat fuck fuckfuckfuck,” but you keep it together as long as it takes to reach the shore.  
  
The ghosts sweeping through the entranceway are _fucking badass_ in your opinion, right up until one of them admonishes you for your awesome eyewear. “These shades are personally tailored and they cost twenty galleons,” you mutter sulkily to yourself, just as Rose hisses at you to quiet down, the Headmistress is speaking.  
  
You’re not sure why Rose cares so much—Headmistress Maryam is a little too Muggle-loving for your family to approve, and her speech is something about tolerance and open-mindedness in times of fear, which basically confirms what you’ve been told about her.  
  
And then the wrinkled, battered Sorting Hat opens its flap and begins to sing. It’s voice is throaty and crackly and really cool-sounding, so you end up listening to the harmonics more than the actual words. It lets out a final drawn-out note, and then one of the professors is pulling out a scroll and clearing his throat.  
  
“It’s starting,” Rose says in a squeak, and then looks embarrassed.  
  
The first name is announced: “Egbert, John.”  
  
A kid with dorky glasses rushes eagerly to the Hat, and he’s sorted into Gryffindor before it even touches his messy black hair.  
  
“Harley, Jade” walks up with equal eagerness, but the Hat talks to her in a murmur for a long time before making a decision. You think you hear the word Ravenclaw a few times, but eventually she goes to Hufflepuff with a big smile on her face. Poor sucker.  
  
Next is a blind girl with a bright red cane named “Pyrope, Terezi.” After several minutes of deliberation, the Sorting Hat shouts “SLYTHERIN!”  
  
“Serket, Vriska” is the first name you recognize. She’s from a reasonably respected pureblood family, and you haven’t met in person but you’ve heard some pretty intense stories, so you’re not surprised when she’s Sorted into Slytherin within three seconds.  
  
“I thought they would approach this in alphabetical order,” whispers Rose, chewing her thumbnail. It’s an old nervous habit. You roll your eyes behind your shades, thinking that she has nothing to worry about, she takes to cunning and ambition like a fish takes to water. You, on the other hand, are nothing special.

“Leijon, Nepeta,” the professor announces, and the first-year in question makes her way to the dais.  
  
“HUFFLEPUFF!” She doesn’t look surprised, but she spares a wistful glance over her shoulder at someone in the crowd.  
  
“Zahhak, Equius.” It’s a guy with bulging muscles who looks at least a year older than he is, and you recognize him with a grimace. He’s from a powerful pureblood family, although one that includes a smattering of blood traitors. He walks to the Hat with a confident gait, but he’s sweating anxiously.  
  
The Hat starts to shout, “SLYTH—”  
  
“No,” Zahhak barks out, and miraculously, the Hat goes silent.  
  
The entire school waits, whispering in excitement, as he argues furiously with the Sorting Hat under his breath. After several minutes, the Hat lets out a sudden wry laugh and announces “HUFFLEPUFF!” Their table applauds louder than usual, and the Leijon girl from earlier stands up and hugs him, beaming, as he takes his seat.  
  
“I didn’t know you could argue with your Sorting,” you say to Rose.  
  
“I didn’t think so either. There’s not anything about that in _Hogwarts, A History_.”  
  
“Keep it up and you’ll end up in Ravenclaw,” you tease, and she turns around and gives you a patented Lalonde _that was not funny_ death glare.  
  
A few more kids get Sorted (“Captor, Sollux” to Ravenclaw, “Nitram, Tavros” to Gryffindor, “Megido, Aradia” to Ravenclaw) and then the professor is calling, “Strider, Dave.”  
  
You glance over to where Dirk is sitting at the Slytherin table and give him a nod. He nods back, and you stride (hah) forward. There are a thousand eyes on you, like physical pinpricks pressing into your skin. Rose is watching with wide eyes and a nervous expression you can see her trying to smother.  
  
The Hat feels dry and leathery when you place it on your head. You have to fight to keep your shades from being knocked off when it slips down your forehead.

“Hmm,” it muses, humming in a way that vibrates through your skull. “Such wonderful loyalty! Yes, Hufflepuff is the house for you.”  
  
You flinch, an honest-to-goodness full-body un-Strider-like _flinch._ “What? No,” you hiss as quietly as you can. “I need to be in Slytherin.”  
  
“Want, maybe. Need? Not precisely, no.”  
  
Fuck. You try to keep your breath steady and your emotions off your face. “My whole family is in Slytherin.”  
  
“Oh yes, your _family!_ ” says the Hat delightedly. “Your parents, who you look up to. Your brother, whom you would defend unto death. Your cousin that might as well be your sister, whom you treat as your best friend despite every disagreement and nuisance that comes between you. Oh, such fiery, _burning_ loyalty! Trust me, I’m literally in your head, and let me tell you—it’s _wonderful_. Like a lit fireplace on a wintry day. It’s written down to your bones, boy, not just the attachments you bear now but the friendships you have yet to form. Hufflepuff will serve you well.”  
  
“Not Hufflepuff,” you insist. “Not there.”  
  
A sigh. “Must you really? Can’t you possibly consider it? You won’t do well there if you can’t accept it, you know.”  
  
You grit your teeth. “I don’t _want_ to accept it. I’m not a Hufflepuff.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Oh, well. I suppose it can’t be helped. There is another possible option, to which you are also suited, if slightly less so…” Too late, you pick up on the gleeful note in its voice. “GRYFFINDOR!”  
  
The world stops dead. Frozen. There’s a coldness in your fingers and your toes, and you can't move for a long moment.  
  
When you take off the Hat and start walking, you try to catch Dirk’s eye, but… why are you even trying in sunglasses? And even if you weren’t, you can’t tell if his expression is cold or just blank. You’re not sure you want to know.

Your tie turns red and gold. You take a seat at your House’s table, and the kid with the glasses (John, probably?) leans forward and babbles something energetically. One of the older Gryffindors introduces himself as Rufioh and thumps you on the shoulder, which you refuse to react to. You’re not feeling much like physical contact right now. Or, y’know, ever again.  
  
In fact, you’re so busy thinking about how much of a failure you are that you almost miss it when someone comes up behind you and says, “Move over, asshole.”  
  
It’s Karkat. He’s doing his best to look grumpy, but he’s got a tiny smile tugging at his lips, and you remember that he actually wanted to be in this House. You move over wordlessly.  
  
He sits down, craning his neck to watch the ghosts swooping overhead. “I was kind of expecting a bigger response.”  
  
You don’t answer.  
  
“Are you _sulking_?” When that doesn’t get a rise out of you, he slumps forward. “So you’re upset over getting the wrong House.”  
  
“None of your fucking business.” Why is he even trying to talk to you, honestly, can’t he see you’re not in the mood?  
  
“Look, Strider, does it really matter? One House is just as good as another, right?”  
  
“I get that you don’t really understand these things,” you say, “but one House is _nowhere near_ as good as another.”  
  
He looks like he wants to argue—like he knows anything about it—but you hear the professor with the list of names call out, “Lalonde, Rose,” and you stop to watch.  
  
Her robes swish behind her as she steps onto the dais. She accepts the Sorting Hat with grace and just before the rim dips over her eyes, she looks at you and smiles. A wide, genuine smile, not the tight-lipped smirks she’s taken to in the past year that look like her mother’s. It’s a message. You’re grateful.  
  
The hat shouts “SLYTHERIN!” and as she goes to sit next to Dirk, the Headmistress raps her wand on the golden podium and the hall falls silent.  
  
Time for _another_ speech about tolerance and equality, it seems. Most of the Gryffindor table is really hanging on to Maryam’s words, though, and you hear a few murmurs of “She was a Gryffindor as a student, you know” and “A great witch, truly great.”  
  
There’s a sensation like a small bit of your arm being dunked in cold water, and you look up to find a very small, very short ghost tapping you. He’s wearing a sash that says MAYOR on it. Once he has your attention, he offers you a ghostly firefly in his outstretched palms. When you look confused, he just gives you the most earnest expression you’ve ever seen.  
  
You take a guess and awkwardly put your hand out. The firefly rises up and buzzes around your arm and head, eventually settling in your palm (by which you mean halfway submerged in your hand, creating a startling cold sensation). Something about it is just so oddly endearing that it might just qualify as the most charming thing you’ve ever experienced.  
  
“Huh,” says Karkat. “Isn’t that the Hufflepuff ghost? He’s been over at that table for the entire feast.”  
  
The ghost puts his spindly hands on his waist in a highly disapproving manner. Rufioh leans forward and says, “Whoa, careful there! The Mayor might not speak, but he is an extremely important and distinguished individual and you should speak directly to him while he is present. And yes, he is ordinarily considered a Hufflepuff ghost.” He turns to the Mayor and adds, “We are grateful that you have chosen to grace us with your presence, sir.”  
  
To your astonishment, Karkat actually looks sheepish. Before you can rib him for it, the Mayor pats you on the head in a gesture that would have been infuriating from anyone else, creating a brief cold spot on the crown of your skull, and zooms off to return to the Hufflepuff table. The firefly lingers, sinking to the level of your plate, which… is covered in delicious food. When did that happen?  
  
You must have missed it in your preoccupation with Mayor-related d’awws, because everyone around you is digging in. You follow suit.  
  
When the feast is finished the prefects lead you to the dormitories, and instead of seeing elegant leather furnishings and meticulously woven tapestries and portholes offering glimpses under the lake, the Gryffindor common room is warm and messy and covered in the colors of a raging fire. In the boy’s dormitory Karkat immediately claims the bed closest to the window.  
  
You wander closer to Karkat’s four-poster, where he’s carefully setting up his hermit crab tank on the side table. “Sup.”  
  
He narrows his eyes at you. “Nothing is ‘sup,’ Strider, that’s not even a real fucking word, you festering feculent asshole, and if you so much as _breathe_ on Crabdad I will slit your throat while you sleep.”  
  
You blink. “You named your hermit crab ‘Crabdad’?”  
  
“Hmm, what was that? The peanut gallery has some comments for me? Oh wait! Unfortunately, all my peanut-gallery-related fucks have tragically shriveled throughout the course of the day. Whatever shall I do!”  
  
“Now you sound like Rose. Wrong, just wrong."  
  
He throws a pillow at you. It misses. “Douche.”  
  
“Naw, just a Strider,” you say. He throws another pillow, and it wings your sunglasses. “—man, no, why do you gotta mess with the shades? That’s sacred territory, bro. That hurts me. Right here.” You poke your chest.  
  
He rolls his eyes. “Thank God your extraordinary levels of incompetence will no doubt get you expelled in the next week, because I don’t know what I’d do if I had to put up with you for seven full years.”  
  
You’re sure your family would be bitterly disappointed if you made friends with a Muggleborn, but… you’re not in Slytherin and the points don’t matter, so why the hell not? He’s entertaining, and when he saw you feeling bad he tried to cheer you up instead of pouncing on the weakness. You always thought you’d be bantering and walking to your classes and puzzling out your homework with Rose or someone else from a proper House, but that’s not going to happening, so why not let it be Karkat?  
  
An hour later, once you’re warm and mostly under the covers with the breeze wafting over you, you think sleepily, _It could be worse._ And you even half mean it, too.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> so i have a [tumblr](http://unintelligible-screaming.tumblr.com/)


End file.
